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Monday, January 03, 2011

blame

you may have noticed that i don't like the conservatives.

you wouldn't be far wrong if you thought that i despise the current crop of smug over privileged tories who are currently in power. they wear their entitlement like smartly cut suits from savile row, at least they are honest about it, and i can admire them for that.

george osborne has been on a plush skiing holiday to the swiss alps, the bad news is he has returned safely home this week.

for some odd reason mr. orsborne’s decision to take a new year’s family break has come under attack.

i can’t understand why anyone can complain.

i can see why the daily mirror would say something unkind about mr. osborne. they describe him as being ‘callous’ ‘glib’ that he is acting like a modern day marie antoinette ‘sneering down at people’. i am sure that the boys at the ‘socialist worker’ and the ‘morning star’ are even more vitriolic in their attacks on poor little rich boy george.

i can’t understand why the ‘daily mail’ or ‘the sun’ would have a have any problems with mr. osborne jetting off with his family. given that both newspapers have been generally supportive of the con/dem cuts and their austerity drive i can only imagine that the highly paid editors of both papers (and their proprietors) had given up their christmas and new year celebrations and were either working down the local homeless shelter or were sat at home watching tv (the bbc of course) while enjoying a supermarket six pack. i doubt it very much, unless the supermarket was harrods and the six-pack was bollinger.

still whenever a quote is needed – you can always rely on the taxpayer’s alliance to provide one. one of their officials had this to say: “with hikes in vat and fuel duty, it won’t be a very happy new year for many taxpayers, so some will see this as highly insensitive given their own circumstances.

‘the new taxes that politicians are putting in place will make it that bit harder for ordinary families to enjoy little luxuries and holidays.”

quite why anyone gives a flying fuck what the taxpayer’s alliance has to say about anything is still a mystery to me – they are a self-appointed mouthpiece for big business. while they might be quick to condemn mr. osborne for going on holiday they are slow to attack those in the business community who use tax avoidance policies or who offshore their profits (after all if they are paying less tax, then the rest of us have to pay more). nor do they have anything bad to say about those who make large parts of their workforce redundant – again if you put more people on the social then the tax spend increases. nor are they saying that the forthcoming financial sector bonuses are also wrong in the circumstances (let’s be fair what the taxpayer’s alliance believe is that as long as the rich are ok the rest of us can struggle.)

what also makes all the outrage being directed at mr. osborne even more bizarre is that he is a very wealthy individual, he is rolling in cash and he can afford to go to the alps. while i am not quite as comfortable with the ‘filthy rich’ as perter mandelson i can’t see what the point is of criticising those who have money when they spend it on what they see fit.

it is not like george osborne has done anything wrong, given the chance most people would do the same (indeed all over the snow affected holiday period we had to listen to people going on about how their winter break had been ruined).

it is not like it is a surprise that a very rich tory is showing us that ‘we are all in it together’ means as much as a liberal democrat promise. while mr. osborne went on holiday, mr. cameron decided to cancel his family holiday in thailand. no doubt everyone in the cameron household donned sackcloth.

at least mr. osborne is honest.

mr. cameron has shown that he is all patronizing spin.

now that ‘the sun’ and ‘daily mail’ have raised issues with mr. osborne’s holiday arrangements perhaps they might want to take another look at the policies of the tories and be somewhat more critical of those arrangements.